Greene County’s love of farmers markets gives visitors another excursion during the road trip. Add picking up local produce and baked goods from among your stops at Thistlethwaite Vineyards for wine, Shields Nursery for plants, and Waynesburg Milling Company to pick up a gift made by a local artisan. Once you taste fresh picked tomatoes, you’ll be glad you did.
Waynesburg is perhaps best known for a summer-time event, their annual Rain Day celebration on July 29. The local holiday is known around the globe and receives national attention each year as locals enjoy the festivities on High Street in Greene County’s “County Town” hoping that rain will fall from the sky, keeping a tradition alive that dates back a little over a century. But how did such a small rural community get their own holiday?
One of the best known steamboat tugs and the only one still on a river is the W.P. Snyder, Jr., originally built in 1918 and owned by the Carnegie Steel Company. It was originally named the W.H. Clingerman and was one of the first steel hulled steamboats. In September of 1945, it was sold to the Crucible Steel Company and renamed W.P. Snyder, Jr.
The Pennsylvania, Monongahela & Southern Railroad was organized in 1902 under the Pennsylvania Railroad to extend the rail line from West Brownsville to Rices Landing. In May 2000, the abandoned rail bed was dedicated as a rail-trail along the Monongahela River.
Along the Greene River Trail Rices Landing Settlement of Rices Landing One of the earliest overnight visitors was George Washington, when he and his troops camped here on their way to Pittsburgh during the French & Indian War. In 1786, John Rice purchased land on the east side of Enoch’s Run, a tributary of the…
William A. Young, a descendant of two established families of Washington and Greene counties, purchased a plot of land in Rices Landing in 1900. The following year his mother, Rachel A. Young, bought the adjoining lot and sold it to her son in 1902. William Young built his foundry and machine shop on these two parcels of land and operated the facility until his death in 1940. Young’s sons, Walter and Carl, carried on the operation until 1965.
Small town libraries are like the loving literary auntie that every family depends on to make learning a great adventure for kids of all ages. Kids can find themselves in another world within the pages of books found at the library.
While on the Greene River Trail, take the opportunity to see a variety of wildlife – including birds!
Named by H.D. Rodgers of the First Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, the first reference to the Pittsburgh coal bed was on a 1761 map. In the mid 1700s at Fort Pitt, coal was being mined on Coal Hill, or as it is known now, Mount Washington. The coal was extracted from drift mines in an outcrop about 200 feet above the Monongahela River.
From the outside, Eva K. Bowlby Public Library fits right in with all the other the stately homes on North Richhill Street, built during Greene County’s first gas and oil boom days. Wildcatters and lucky leaseholders of the early 20th century brought their sudden wealth to Waynesburg’s north side and converted pastureland into dream homes. The hillside behind the library was once a turkey farm.